Atheism 19 - The God Paradox

 Some of my readers are still having some difficulty with my assertion that in order for the universe to exist then God, of necessity, must exist.  Let us consider this from another angle.

Consider for a moment the vast number of events that must have occurred in a given order over the course of the last 13.8 billion years to get from the Big Bang to me typing on my computer keyboard.  Without going into great detail (although you're free to look those details up if you prefer), the Laws of Statistics confirm that all of those events happening just as they did to make my typing possible represent a statistical impossibility.  The odds are better than I might place $1.00 into every lottery on the planet and hit the jackpot on all of them at the same time.  Possible?  Sure, but the odds are so negligible as to be beyond consideration.  Again avoiding too much detail, we're basically saying that trillions of cosmic events not only happened just so, but that they all happened in just the right order for the various astronomical and chemical reactions to build up to sentient apes on this distant planet.

Let us consider a single example as a measure of explanation: about 65 million years ago, an incredibly large meteorite struck the Yucatan Peninsula, causing enough radioactive fallout to wipe out 95% of all life on earth, including the dinosaurs.  This was a major link in the chain of events that led to the existence of human life.  Of course, as we all know, the earth rotates on its axes.  Had that meteorite been 30 minutes earlier in its arrival, it would have landed in the Atlantic Ocean, causing a fair amount of damage, to be sure, but almost certainly not such a massive extinction event.  Thirty minutes later, and it would have hit in the middle of the Pacific, with the same results.  A meteorite hitting the earth at some point is cosmologically inevitable.  But a meteorite of that magnitude striking the earth at that exact moment in the earth's rotation is immensely unlikely.  If we consider that one coincidence and multiply it by the trillions of other coincidental events that must have occurred in just such ways in just such an order at just such moments, we begin to appreciate the level of sheer dumb luck that I'm attempting to describe.

So, if the odds of the universe existing just exactly as it does by a stroke of cosmic coincidence isn't even worth considering, then how did the universe come to be exactly what it is?  If not luck, then the only other explanation is design.  This is the God Paradox.  Many has been the atheist (including myself) that simply refuses to concede this point, so let us consider other hypotheses.

Steven Hawking once postulated that ours is only one of an almost infinite number of universes that co-exist beyond our ability to observe, and in each one, events happened differently so that the odds of events occurring just so in this particular universe while not in others greatly increases.  Sir Roger Penrose came up with the idea that the universe works in cycles; that it begins with a Big Bang, expands to maximum potential, re-collapses on itself, and, under the gravitational pressure created by this collapse, Big Bangs again and the cycle repeats, perhaps with minor discrepancies in each re-formation.

Both of these are, of course, unprovable hypotheses with no means of support through observation or evidence, and, to my mind, no more convincing than the concept of God, but let us consider them on their own merits.

My first concern here is that, even if we were to accept either or both of these ideas as scientifically sound, they still do not disprove the existence of God.  Actually, they only delay the inevitable slamming into the wall of the God Paradox.

Let us consider a somewhat simplified analogy.  Let us compare the concepts of a multiverse or universal cycle to an infinitely large room filled with trillions of Lego blocks.  As a metaphor for the Universal Cycle concept,  we say that a kid enters the room, develops an idea and builds something with the blocks, something cosmically complex.  Then, after some time passes, the kid grows bored with his creation, so he disassembles his Lego universe and builds something else.  He does this repeatedly ad infinitum.  Or, as a metaphor for the Multiverse Hypothesis, perhaps the kid only uses some blocks to create his miniature universe, uses some other blocks to create a slightly different universe, etc.  Admittedly oversimplified, but this seems to be a reasonable representation of the given postulates.

So, what happens now?  We are faced with the questions "where did the kid come from?" and "where did the Lego blocks come from?"  With the former, science give us a rather pat response - the kid is named Gravity (with very little discussion about how matter causes gravity v. how gravity causes matter; perhaps a conversation for a future post).  But what about our second question; "where do the blocks come from?"

With the idea of Universal Cycles, the answer is "well, the blocks come from the remnants of the previous universe."  But, then, where did those blocks come from?  From whence came the blocks from which the very first universe was built?  "There was no first universe," I can hear my atheist interlocutor responding.  "The cycle has been repeating itself for eternity."  Eternity?  Really?  Isn't that the word used by theologians for Heaven?  Did we not just slam into God unawares?

Rather than resolve this paradox, the Multiverse concept merely amplifies it.  It doesn't provide an answer to the question of the blocks' origin, it simply adds an infinite number of addition blocks to the equation.  We're still stuck with the nagging doubt as to the beginning of everything.

No matter how hard we may try, we simply cannot turn the clock back far enough to find any natural source for the origin of the universe -the factory that produced the original Lego blocks - at least no natural source that has been my privilege to learn.  Sooner or later we're still stuck having to deal with the Uncaused Cause.  So, in lieu of a natural source, our only alternative is to consider unnatural, extra-natural, supra-natural, supernatural sources.  This paradox is so problematic that we often just dismiss the question as if it were somehow not relevant.  But, in science, every answer leads to another question.  We don't get to dismiss a question simply because the most likely - or only - answer makes us uncomfortable.  

No, it seems to me that, no matter how hard we try, science always winds its way back to the point made by theologians 8 millennia ago: "In the beginning, God..."

Pax